ficer. At that time, the prevailing thinking was that mostpeople didn’t want to buy houses. “But we decided tostart focusing on people who did want to buy houses,”he says. “That gave us the confidence to go out there.We were tired of the gloom and doom.”Fischer came to real estate from the automotive in-dustry, where branding is in the DNA. “One of the thingsI had to do was pinpoint the value of a brand in real es-tate,” he says. In the automotive industry, when manu-facturers bring out a new vehicle, they put consumersin a room with three unmarked cars: the new model, anolder version of the same car, and a competitor. Con-sumers go through a checklist of features and do ashort test drive and a pricing analysis.“What we found was that depending on how the carswere badged, people would be willing to pay more,” saysFischer. Call something a Maserati, and people wouldprice the car higher than if it was badged as a Nissan ora Ford, even if both cars had the same features. Fischerwanted to see if branding had a similar impact on realestate. “I absolutely believed it would,” he says, and he3 Brandswas right.

Earl Lee, president of Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Services ince 2008, was tapped to head HSF Affiliates LLC, which will manage both the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and Real Living Real Estate brands.